Apparatus for filling cigarette blanks with tobacco are known in the art, for example from the U.S. Pat. No. 3,509,887. The apparatus described there includes a tobacco pressure plate and a tobacco expeller which is actuated by means of a rack and pinion drive.
The empty cigarette blanks which are commercially available include those equipped with only a cardboard tip as well as those provided with a tobacco smoke filter in the tip. In order to further decrease the nicotine and tar content of the tobacco smoke, the manufacturers of cigarette blanks have also offered blanks with a double filter, i.e., a filter of approximately twice the length of previously known filters. When such double filter cigarette blanks are used in the known cigarette making machines, the reduced free space for admitting tobacco causes difficulties in their use.
It is known in the art to adjust the path of the tobacco expeller to various blank lengths. However, even these adjustments cannot overcome the difficulty which occurs when, for the same length of the blank, the free space for receiving tobacco is reduced due to the presence of the double filter.